Paloma Read online

  DeRicci put most of the containers near him, sticking the restaurant supplied spoons in them. But she opened the Ilidio dish, squeezed the root so some of that brown substance dripped into the food, and then poured it on the wriggling noodles.

  Some of the stuff splashed on Nyquist’s screen. DeRicci wiped it off with one finger, then licked the finger clean.

  “If you knew how long it’s been since that screen was cleaned, you wouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  She sank into one of the chairs. “I do know. It’s been two years. I used to have the office next door.”

  Hair rose on the back of his neck. “You were here when the bomb went off.”

  Although numerous bombs had gone off in Armstrong over its long life, there was only one that locals called “the bomb.” It was the bomb that destroyed part of the dome.

  “I was in my office,” she said. “We lost power to the entire building. No air movement, no environmental controls, nothing. And we shook from the dome walls coming down. A lot of people got injured.”

  Her smile was gone. She had grabbed a plate and just held it, not dishing up any food.

  “I hated that day,” she said.

  Nyquist nodded. “I was investigating a murder.”

  He’d always thought that ironic. When a lot of people had died in a deliberately set bomb attack, he had been across the city, investigating a simple domestic—wife stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife.

  “Nowhere near the bomb, I hope,” DeRicci said.

  “No, but I was holed up with a crazy woman and the man she’d stabbed to death, for nearly four hours.” He grabbed his own plate. “Keeping her calm took some fancy talking on my part.”

  “I’m amazed you did it,” DeRicci said.

  “Me, too,” he said. “Looking back, no one would’ve even noticed if I killed her instead of arrested her. But how was I to know that?”

  DeRicci shook her head. “You would’ve known.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I would’ve.”

  That was a day he didn’t want to relive. But there were a lot of days like that in his career. A new partner—he didn’t know how many partners ago—had asked him why he stayed on the job. He’d said it was because he didn’t know how to do anything else, but the honest answer was that on the good days he loved it, and on the bad days, he felt needed.

  No one else had ever really needed him. Not his ex-wife, not his family, not even the handful of people who passed for his friends.

  He didn’t even like having a partner. Even though he complained about them, the problem never really was with them. It was with him. He preferred to be alone and answering to no one.

  Maybe that was why he got so nervous when a woman attracted him. He had no real idea how to operate in any kind of partnership. He wasn’t sure he was capable of doing so.

  “The bombing’s always a conversation-stopper, isn’t it?” DeRicci said. “We all go back to that day.”

  He nodded, then started to dish up some rice. He threw garlic chicken on top, a bit of the curried beef to the side. Then he grabbed one of the chopsticks and dipped it into the wriggling, crackling mess that was the Ilidio meal.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s called yringen,” she said. “I’m told it’s better with arsenic, but I’m not going to try it that way.”

  He shook his head, certain she was joking now. Arsenic, a metal, was used as a poison a lot in the old murder mysteries. It was considered an arcane form of murder, until one of the poison squad’s symptoms tests, given to detective cadets, cited it in a major quiz. No case like that had ever appeared on the Moon, so the poison squad had to back up its question with all sorts of old entertainments, from 2-D movies, to murder novels that had survived from previous centuries, to actual cases, all of which had occurred in pre-twenty-second-century Earth.

  “They couldn’t serve it that way, anyhow, could they?” he asked.

  “Sure they can,” DeRicci said. “Arsenic is allowed, even here, in very small doses for a lot of the alien cultures. No restaurants serving humans use it, though, because in its mildest doses, it causes severe stomach upset.”

  He paused as he held that chopstick, still not sure he wanted to taste the Ilidio dish. “How come you know all of this?”

  “I could lie to you and tell you it’s because I aced the poisons part of detective school or because I’m the Security Chief and we have to know everything.”

  “But?” he asked.

  “But,” she said, “for a while, I was considered the poisons woman on the detective squad, mostly because those cases were considered at the bottom of the rung. A person might’ve died from deliberate poisoning or, hmm, they ate something they shouldn’t’ve accidentally. More often than not, they ate something they shouldn’t’ve.”

  His stomach continued to growl, but that was the only sign he felt of continued appetite. He still hadn’t moved the chopstick out of the Ilidio dish.

  “You’re not giving me much confidence in this food,” he said.

  She took a spoonful of the wriggling noodles, added something fat and squishy that vaguely resembled a prune, and ate.

  “I know more about strange foods than anyone,” she said as she chewed. “And you should feel reassured, not frightened. If I’m gonna eat it, then it’s trustworthy. I’ve seen too many poison deaths to risk going out that way on my own.”

  He gave her an uncomfortable look, then used the chopsticks to grab a squirming noodle. He knew the noodle wasn’t alive—a number of multiethnic cuisines used these noodles because they seemed exotic—but it made him queasy to look at it.

  He put it in his mouth, bit down, and got the expected crunch from the noodle. He hadn’t expected the sweet-bitter taste of the sauce, however, or the peppery aftertaste.

  He sighed, then dished some onto his plate.

  “You liked it,” DeRicci said.

  “Against my better judgment,” he muttered.

  She laughed and finished dishing up her own meal. Then she ate the Ilidio portion quickly, washing it down with some liquid he hadn’t even noticed.

  “It’s goes with the meal,” she said after a moment. “Trust me, you’ll want it when the pepper and the curry collide.”

  He probably would want it, but he worried about trying so many new things, particularly when he was already on edge. Still, he took the other container, which he had initially thought held more food, and took a tentative sip.

  It tasted like a cross between real orange juice, fake strawberries, and some kind of cream. It was extremely sweet and tart, but it did cut the peppery aftertaste from the yringen.

  He ate some more, not sure how to proceed. The food was better than he expected. If he had been the one to choose, he would have picked up some Moon-built hot dogs with his favorite fresh-from-the-carton rolls and some coleslaw made with reconstituted lettuce and Moon-grown carrots.

  “Were the last couple of hours productive?” DeRicci asked, moving to the garlic chicken on her plate. She ate a lot faster than he did, maybe because she was used to the food.

  “Not as much as I’d hoped.” He briefed her on the slowness in forensics, the uncooperative nature of Ethan Brodeur (“at least he doesn’t hate you,” DeRicci muttered. “He’s always hated me.”), and heavy detail work he was going to have to do on the security vids. “I did find out a few things about the Stuarts, however.”

  “The Stuarts,” she said, looking up from her plate. “There’s more than Lucianna?”

  “A dozen more. They’ve settled all over the Moon. One of the Moon’s first families, as well, only without the Wagner’s illustrative modern pedigree. The Stuarts have mostly become big fish in the smaller domes. Lucianna was the star of her branch of the family, and here’s the thing that amazes me. She never let them know she changed her name.”

  DeRicci frowned. She clearly didn’t understand what he meant. “So?’

  “So,” he said. “By doing so
, she effectively cut off all communication with that part of her family. In many ways, she tried to cut off her entire past, although it didn’t work. She went back to WSX, but in a different capacity.”

  “I don’t understand,” DeRicci said.

  “I don’t either. But here’s what I get from the official family history—and they have one of those special family sites, with vids and oral histories and all kinds of testimonies about how important they are to the Moon—”

  “Ick,” DeRicci said.

  He nodded, but continued. “What I get is that Lucianna started WSX with her own money. She’s the one who made the firm what is, not Claudius Wagner. She merged with his smaller, less prestigious law firm after hers became the do-not-mess-with firm in Armstrong. And she became that kind of firm doing work for her family.”

  “What kind of work?” DeRicci asked.

  “Something corporate,” he said. “Something to do with the Earth Alliance. Something that maybe might have led someone to disappear. I don’t know. It’s too buried in the family myth to tell.”

  “Was she the only Stuart here in Armstrong?”

  “Not then,” he said. “But when she went through the name change, she was. By then, some of the older, more impressive Stuarts were dead, and a few just vanished from the family chronology.”

  “Vanished?” DeRicci asked. “As in disappeared?’

  “As in there’s no history of them past a certain date, but no death date, either. For a family that’s so proud of its heritage and history, I find that unusual.”

  “It sounds like a mess,” she said.

  Nyquist nodded. “This whole case is a mess of details. And I can’t even get Brodeur to tell me what Paloma died of.”

  “Except that she was murdered,” DeRicci said.

  “You’d know that, too, if you saw the body,” he said.

  “It’s not a death ritual of some kind?” she asked.

  “Brodeur isn’t willing to say, and to be honest, I’m not either. None of us know enough about the aliens around us to know if this is some new wrinkle on a Disty Vengeance Killing or something like that.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it from what you describe,” DeRicci said.

  “It doesn’t look like it, either.” Nyquist sighed and set down his half-touched plate. “I do understand why Brodeur doesn’t want to commit. I’d be the same in his shoes. But I’m worried. I’m worried that I’m running out of time.”

  “For what?” DeRicci asked.

  He shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

  She took some more curried beef, even though she hadn’t touched most of hers. Then she sipped more of that noxiously sweet Ilidio drink.

  “Well,” she said when she finished. “I have some bad news.”

  He braced himself.

  “The Lost Seas is under quarantine.”

  “Quarantine?”

  She nodded. “And not just from our government. Three other Alliance governments have placed a quarantine on the ship, not to mention something called the Bixian Government.”

  “What’s that?”

  It took her about ten minutes to explain the Bixian Government to him, and he still wasn’t sure he understood. He picked the chicken off his plate while she talked, ate some of the rice, and then grabbed one of the wrapped cookies.

  DeRicci took the other, as if she were afraid he was going to steal it.

  “It took one of my assistants most of the last two hours to find out what a Bixian Government quarantine means,” DeRicci said. “With the other governments, it’s fairly simple. The ship has been contaminated somehow, and has to be inspected by their government regulators before it’s allowed in any of their ports.”

  “It means something different for the Bixians?” Nyquist asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” DeRicci said. “It means the ship is cursed.”

  Twenty-two

  It took Flint longer than he expected to show Van Alen the security recording of Paloma’s holographic message and then to explain what he had learned about the Lost Seas. He half expected Van Alen to call an end to their meeting, claiming his time was up and he had to make a return appointment.

  Instead, she gave him her full attention, pausing only to ask the occasional question.

  When he finished, she templed her fingers and frowned. “Do you really think it that important to get into the Lost Seas before the Wagners? They’ll be bound by the same quarantine orders that you will.”

  “I think it very important,” Flint said.

  She let out a small sigh. “You could be risking all kinds of horrible diseases or something else that we can’t even fathom right now.”

  “Or it could simply be a bluff,” he said, “something to keep people off the ship.”

  She frowned at him. “Paloma would have had to do that.”

  “Possibly,” he said. “Or the Wagners themselves.”

  “I thought you said the quarantine orders had been on the ship for some time.”

  “I did.”

  Van Alen tapped her fingertips against the desktop. She was an active thinker. It was probably a learned trait so that her clients would give her a moment to figure out what she was going to say.

  “It makes no sense to me,” she said finally. “After several years, anyone can contest the quarantine.”

  “Even if they didn’t initially own the ship?”

  Van Alen nodded. “They’d still have to get the original owner’s permission to enter, but the law firm could have done that, I’m sure.”

  Flint stood up. This meeting had already gone on too long for him. “So I could contest the quarantines.”

  “It would take forever,” Van Alen said, “and cause a lot of interest in that ship. It wouldn’t be in your best interest.”

  “See? The quarantine works, then. It would have worked against Paloma, as well.”

  “Or against the Wagners,” Van Alen said. “Or anyone else who wants to go into the ship.”

  Flint walked to the far side of the room. Behind a large, real (which surprised him) plant, an overstuffed chair leaned against the wall. A footstool was pushed slightly away from it, and a table near it held several empty glasses.

  The part of the room where Van Alen did most of her real work.

  She said nothing as he stood there, probably not to call attention to its importance.

  “Why wouldn’t she have told me?” he asked without facing Van Alen. “On that hologram, why wouldn’t she have said anything to me about the quarantine?”

  “You knew her,” Van Alen said quietly. “I didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what bothers me the most. She told me to get information off of it, knowing there was this big hurdle, and she never said a word.”

  “Maybe she thought because of your police experience, you could go around the regulations. You thought that.”

  He sighed, then turned. She was watching him, catlike, from her desk. Except for the drumming fingertips—which had actually stopped—she hadn’t moved.

  “I did,” he said. “And you’re right. She would have. She’s seen me go around a lot of regulations.”

  “Not really something you should tell your lawyer,” Van Alen said primly.

  Flint raised his eyebrows. “I thought everything is confidential here.”

  “I just don’t want to get implicated in too much. Believe it or not, lawyers have ethics, too.”

  “Some lawyers,” he said.

  “Like some Retrieval Artists,” she snapped.

  He felt his cheeks warm. That was a partial dig at Paloma, and it was probably deserved. He still admired her too much.

  Van Alen saw his reaction and it must have bothered her. She stood and gave him that warm smile again. “Look,” she said, “there is something we can try. It’s risky, and it brings the ship and all its contents to everyone’s attention.”

  He bit his lower lip. He hadn’t expected one final solution. “What’s that?”

  �
��We have to assume that Paloma was the owner when the quarantine happened. We will never know who requested the quarantine, at least from Armstrong’s side, only who administered it. That would be Space Traffic, but there was a reason why they hadn’t put the ship into Terminal 81.”

  “I know,” Flint said. “I couldn’t get that information.”

  “It may be irrelevant.” Van Alen’s voice got a bit breathy. Obviously she had remembered a point of law that had gotten her excited about this case. “If Paloma was the owner when the quarantine occurred, and she failed to request that all the data be downloaded from that ship before it went into permanent stasis, then we might have a chance to download it ourselves.”

  “How?” Flint asked.

  Van Alen smiled. “A little-known regulation from the early days of the port. At that time, so many ships were coming in, bringing God knows what with them, that they all went into quarantine.”

  “Like anyone coming from off the Moon now,” Flint said. “Automatic decontamination.”

  “Yes, but now we use a quick procedure for the humans and an even quicker examination for the ships, something automated.”

  Flint nodded. Rookies in Space Traffic always got a few days working with quarantined vessels. The rookies were always worried about what faced them, while the veterans added to the worries by recounting stories of their own illnesses.

  It was only when the rookies actually reported for quarantine duty that they realized all the work was done with long-distance scans as the ships came into port. Only experts worked on flagged ships, and only then because the dangers were great.

  “But in the old days,” Van Alen was saying, “a lot of the stuff had to be done by hand. Humans in HazMat suits had to go inside and inspect for themselves. Computers only analyzed where ships had been and the possible hazards. They didn’t find the hazards.”

  Flint knew that bit of history. It had been covered in some damn lecture back when he was starting out, and it had stuck, mostly because he had a vivid imagination and he could always picture himself as one of the unlucky few, searching a ship for some microscopic problem.